A suspected credit-card thief was caught thanks to the quick thinking of a cashier at a beauty-supply store in Florida. He didn’t quite feel comfortable with the purchase, and the customer didn’t have any photo identification on her that matched the name on the card. Instead of turning the customer away, he asked her to pose for a photo while holding up the card. She did.

No one could possibly be so clueless that they would pose, smiling, in the middle of committing credit card fraud, right? The woman did have a photo of herself with the name of the credit card holder written on it, but the real cardholder was 72 years old.

According to a police report obtained by The Smoking Gun, a woman’s wallet was stolen from a nearby Walmart. Police followed the trail of where the card had been used, which led to the beauty supply store. If the cashier had refused the sale, it would have been slightly more difficult to connect her to the stolen card.

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When the writer says “…merchants are now allowed to ask for photo identification when someone uses a credit card.” that is not a full explanation. Yes they are allowed to ask for photo identification, but it goes further than that. The rules vary depending upon who is the card issuer. See the article of July 19, 2014 in Consumerist entitled “10 Answers To Credit Card Questions We Get Asked All The Time,” item #3, for an expanded explanation.